I started Air Rally Ace too late. I had just gotten to know the DXGame Engine pretty well (a game library targetting VB6 + DirectX8) from having made Gem Raider, but the life of VB6 and the DirectX8-friendly version of Windows (that would be WinXP and earlier) were fading. To finish it off, the developer behind DXGame decided to go in a different direction — so he sold the rights to the engine to another developer (who had a pretty cool baseball game that used the engine), and that pretty much sewed-up the end.
This lead me to set off learning some new technology (.Net languages & SlimDX), which someday I’m hoping to use to make some new computer games. In the meantime, my board game designs have been occupying most of my game development attention.
But, before I put the project on indefinite hold, I got the “rally day” racing portion of “Air Rally Ace” ready for a Tech Demo. This part of the game was intended to be the “bonus” levels, to be played in-between the more challenging parts of the game. (The challenging parts were going to be about trouble you went through as you travelled from one rally day event to the next.)
Here are some in-game pictures … complete with captivating colored smoke! (Click them to see big versions …) (more…)
Castle Danger
